Rain Shadow

Chapter 1

Luke

It wasn’t just the smooth curves of her body, or the way she smiled as she got caught up in a thought, or those rare moments of vulnerability that made me want to sweep her into my arms whenever she was near. It was the fear that I could lose her at any minute. With even the slightest turn of events, I could lose her.

Angel’s slim hips swayed in perfect rhythm with her laugh as she walked toward me. She strolled casually across the yard knowing full well that every movement had me mesmerized. In many ways she still seemed like a mirage, like she had on the day she’d found me in the desert. Only now, everything about her affected me physically and mentally, reminding me that she was all too real. But the man she approached was a phantom. There was nothing genuine about me except that I was fucking crazy about her. And she was the only thing still holding me together.

Angel stopped in front of the porch steps and gazed down at me with her teal blue eyes. “You look bored. Apple?” she held out her hand. I shook my head. She lifted the fruit to her mouth and took a bite. Then she turned around and sat on the step below me. She leaned back between my thighs and rested her head back against my chest. I wrapped my arms around her. There was no way to be close to Angel without touching her. It was impossible.

“My grandfather wanted to see you,” she said. “But I told him that you were mine for another hour.” The sweet, crisp fragrance of apple filled the air as she took another bite. Her grandfather, Dreygon Sharpe, had been so preoccupied with his scheming, he’d hardly given any thought to the man he had imprisoned in his compound. The irony of it all was that he’d grown used to me. He almost seemed to like me, and as his admiration grew, his distrust of me waned. For now, it seemed, the president of the notorious Bedlam Motorcycle Club, had no clue that he was housing the enemy. It was hard to know what he’d do if he found out that I was a Drug Enforcement Administration agent. Killing a federal agent might just finally bring the system down on him. Dreygon Sharpe never took missteps. It was what had kept him in power and out of jail. His minions always took the fall if the club got caught in illicit activities. At the agency, we always referred to him as Mr. Clean. He managed to keep his own hands greased enough that nothing would ever stick to him. The district attorney would get really close to having something solid on him and then Dreygon would slip out of his grasp. He was smart, cunning and, from what I could tell, completely insane.

Angel tossed the apple core into the bushes and relaxed back against me. I slipped my hands beneath the hem of her shirt. Her bare skin felt like silk under my fingers. Lying to her had been unbearable, but I’d had to come up with a false history. For her sake and for mine. She knew the sickening details of my capture and torture. I’d laid all of that out to her on that black night when my memory had returned with the visions of being chained to a wall and my ear attached to the trigger of a gun, a gun that would eventually blow apart my best friend’s head. I’d needed to say it out loud before it became wedged in my brain like a railroad stake. And she had listened. I poured out the horror of it all and she’d listened. Her beautiful face took in the ugly reality of what I’d been through without showing any judgment or revulsion. It had kept me from blowing off my own head. She had kept me from that.

For several weeks, self-loathing and denial had plagued me, and more than once I’d begged her for something to end my misery. The compound was plush with drugs of every nature, but every time I sank into a depression where suicide seemed the only option, Angel would bring me out of the darkness. Now, dreams of revenge had replaced the longing to end it all. I was going to make them pay. The Bent for Hell MC was going to pay for what they did, one way or another.

“What should we do to entertain ourselves?” Angel asked.

My hands moved up to her bra, and I felt for the clasp. “Well, Doc, I can think of a few things. And they all require that you disrobe.” I popped the bra open, and her perfect breasts sprang free. I cupped them with my hands and rubbed my thumbs across her nipples. She responded by pushing them harder against my fingers. My hunger for Angel was insatiable. I couldn’t get enough of her. Everything about her was so goddamned erotic that even when I was alone, all I had to do was think of her and I got hard. And it seemed she couldn’t get enough of me either.



She leaned her head back. Her thick, dark lashes shadowed her cheeks as her eyes drifted shut. “You should never stop touching me, Reno,” she said dreamily. Only Angel knew that my real name was Luke. I’d made up a fake name of Josh Frankfort, but it hadn’t mattered. Dreygon still called me Son, a name I loathed coming from him, and Gunner still lovingly referred to me as Stray. The others had adopted Reno.